This paper reviews the book “Infrastructure and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa” by Antonio Estache and Quentin Wodon. The authors summarize the political debate on infrastructure policy in Africa in a very compelling and knowledgeable way and make a convincing case for pro-poor subsidies....

This paper estimates the role of policy and exchange rate uncertainty shocks for EU countries' exports to the world economy. We examine the performance of the four biggest economies, namely Germany, France, Italy and the UK, under policy and exchange rate uncertainty in exports to some of the...

In addition to efficiency standards and consumer information, car-related taxes constitute one of three pillars of the European Commission¿s strategy to reduce CO2 emissions from passenger cars. A longstanding question concerns the effectiveness of such taxes in determining the car-purchasing...

This paper deals with the impact of the $/Euro exchange rate on German exports in the period from 1995Q1 to 2008Q4. Our main aim is to identify "pain thresholds" for German exporters. We rely on a non-linear model according to which suddenly strong spurts of exports occur when changes of the EXR...

A non-linear model is applied where suddenly strong spurts of exports occur when changes of the exchange rate go beyond a zone of inaction. We call the latter a "play" area-analogous to mechanical play and implement an algorithm describing path-dependent play-hysteresis into a regression...

Traditional specifications of export equations incorporate foreign demand as a demand pull factor and the real exchange rate as a relative price variable. However, such standard export equations have failed to explain the export performance of euro area countries during the crisis period. In...

Der Zusammenhang zwischen ökonomischen Größen kennzeichnet sich oftmals dadurch, dass die Ausgangssituation und vergangene Werte von Bedeutung sind. Vergangene (temporäre) exogene Störungen und Zustände des Systems haben einen Einfluss auf die gegenwärtigen Zusammenhänge. Typische...

In this paper a non-linear model is applied, where suddenly strong spurts of exports occur when changes of the exchange rate go beyond a zone of inaction, which we call “play” area – analogous to mechanical play. We implement an algorithm describing path-dependent play-hysteresis into a...

This paper presents evidence that the accumulating cost of Germany’s ambitious plan to transform its system of energy provision – the so-called Energiewende – is butting up against consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for it. Following a descriptive presentation that traces the German...

Discrete-continuous models have become a common technique for addressing selectivity biases in data sets with endogenously partitioned observational units. Alternative two-stage approaches have been suggested by LEE (1983), DUBIN and MCFADDEN (1984), and DAHL (2002), all of which capture the...